The Overton Shift

Everyone wants to weigh in with their Most Astute Take™ on the midterms. But no one wants to even factor in the glaringly obvious: the US has been under the most sustained information attack by foreign states in decades, if not generations. Foreign adversaries have learned to weaponize the very protections and safeguards – First Amendment, Section 230, privacy laws – that make discourse online possible. They use our shield as their weapon. These actors have learned that they don't need to "hack Facebook" — as the press claimed Russia did in 2016. (In fact, that had no measurable impact.) They found that they don't need to infiltrate voting systems. Instead, they have learned to focus on seeding poisonous narratives into virtually every open information system online. It's not only effective, but it's remarkably efficient. The influence happens in various ways: 1. Bot manipulation – Accounts/shows that see enormous engagement surges on particular issues are motivated to double down on the messaging that the bot swarms respond to. 2. Direct incentives – Money and influence. This comes in the form of corporate financing, advertising deals materially larger than their market value. (Did Hasan Piker go to China just for kicks?) 3. Information poisoning – Bringing fringe narratives into the mainstream by seeding them into open, trusted platforms (e.g. Wikipedia). 4. Discourse radicalization – Actors tied to foreign adversarial states pull the discourse further to the fringe. There is no accountability mechanism, so these actors are free to not just say, but endlessly repeat, the most extreme, toxic, and false claims. 5. Network building – As one example: the Singham Network can build, fund, and run ideological networks with alarming success rates. These are broad categories; they break down into thousands of smaller tactics. Further, they innovate. Foreign adversaries have an ability to test and experiment, since state budgets are virtually unlimited relative to the cost. Even more damagingly, there is almost no mainstream journalistic reporting on, or investigation into, malign influence by foreign actors in information spaces. Can we name a single public investigation into information operations by US adversaries like China in recent months? (It's as if, after a decade of "Russia, Russia, Russia," the press simply forgot this is a thing.) Even in the rare cases where we catch and expose these activities, there is almost never consequences: Example 1 - Recall the right-wing influencer taking $10m per year from the Russian government, whose posts seemed design to sowed division? Far from consequences, this individual was entirely let off the hook and even invited back into the country. Example 2 – Al Jazeera's digital network, AJ+, was ordered by DOJ to register as a foreign agent – and simply ignored the order. Were they shut down? Did their operation even slow down? Example 3 – Chinese operatives work in plain site on social platforms, disclosing their affiliations while dragging the discourse into the anti-American fringe. Example 4 – The CCP-linked Singham Network, which funds groups like Code Pink, was exposed in recent months and still functions seamlessly. Example 5 – Influencers and podcasters traveled to Cuba, apparently coordinating with the Cuban government, and are caught doing so. Have any one of them ceased or even decreased their activities? WHAT REALLY MATTERS This is the core imbalance: autocratic states running these operations have no – literally zero – checks on their capabilities: + They face no domestic journalistic investigation. + There is no Oversight Committee demanding answers. + There is no FOIA process to produce information. + There is no consequence in rare cases of exposure. Total freedom to maneuver on the information battlefield. We think, naively, that because these platforms are owned by US companies and regulated by American bodies that they are "ours." Nothing could be further from the truth.